Ties that Bind. Shannon Walsh

when the shape of the planet and the divisions of the land will be less importantWe will be caught in a glow of friendshipA red star of hope will illuminate our livesA star of hopeA star of joyA star of freedom² SISONKE Brutus reminds us that freedom in South Africa has always had a spiritual and moral quality. The founders of this democracy believed that they were creating a society in which friendships could and should exist across the races.Today, a cohort too young to have ever known formal apartheid is asking why they should trust whites. This is a pragmatic response to a poorly managed reconciliation process, but it is worth remembering things weren’t always like this.Helen Joseph remembers walking into prison with Lilian Ngoyi after the women’s march when with some bitterness, Ngoyi said to her:³ LEBO You are better off with your pink skin. SISONKE Joseph agreed and thought of her friend once they were both in prison. LEBO My pink skin brought me a bed, sheets, blankets. The mattress was revolting, urine stained. But Lilian slept on a mat on the floor with only blankets. I had a sanitary bucket with a lid. She had an open bucket covered with a cloth. SISONKE Similarly, Elinor Sisulu writes that when she was imprisoned with Albertina Sisulu, Barbara Hogan kept asking: LEBO Is Ma Sisulu being given this food? If she is not, then I don’t want it. Take it away.⁴ SISONKE The days of friendship stronger than the bars of a jail cell seem distant now. Today, almost 80% of black people in Gauteng say that they will never be able to trust whites, and almost half of whites polled say they think that blacks and whites will never be able to trust each other.⁵ When I speak with nostalgia about this generation of women Lebo says: LEBO I wonder if we, perhaps, are not idealistic about this solidarity? Does it look more real because the consequences of white people’s actions in showing support for black people were so harsh back then? Did struggle offer a place for intimate and sincere friendships, like sisterhood? I am thinking of how we support each other in close relationships, especially female friendships. The kinds of friends who help you get out of bad relationships, who pick you up when you are down, who watch your kids when you need to take care of yourself, who tell you when your man is up to shit ... Did relationships across colour go there?⁶ SISONKE I am shaken. The old idea of friendship as a tool for anti-racist struggles seems irrelevant and old-fashioned now.Sekoetlane Phamodi confronts interracial friendships with a thoroughly modern sensibility: by deleting his white Facebook friends. LEBO As I trawled through profile after profile and album after album, piecing together both my real and Facebook life narratives and where my ‘friends’ fit into it, I started to notice a disturbing pattern.A vast majority of my ‘friends’ were white. And, for an overwhelming majority of these, I was one of a handful of black individuals in their social circles. Wait, what? ... In every friends’ list and every photo album, I found myself playing a bittersweet game of ‘spot the black’. Our mutual friends were almost always lily white. The social events were lily white. And the status updates and posts were well punctuated with whiteness. I began to turn this over and over in my mind. How was it that in a country where more than 80% of the population was black, I found myself the sole or one of a handful of blacks in a lily-white list, party or picture frame? How was it that in a country where more than 80% of the population was black, my white ‘friends’ had, if at all, so few black meaningful friends?⁷ SISONKE Simamkele Dlakavu reflects on a Facebook fight, reminding us that just beneath the surface there is often a well of white rage: LEBO Last week, I witnessed on Facebook interracial ‘friendships’ explode when a black friend of mine posted: ‘It seems that if you’re white and male 70% of the work is [already] done.’ This is the response she got:‘Actually my friend you [are] so far [from] the truth it’s actually scary. White men especially young white men have [it] very tough in this black empowered country. Now try be a white male and look for a job in this anti-white country ... well sorry hun it ain’t going to happen due to the fact that us white folk don’t meet the BEE requirements. My husband is a white male and 70% of his work isn’t done for him hey. If anything he has had to work harder due to the fact that his skin ain’t black. So let’s rather say be young and black and my darling this country is your oyster. But yet everyone is so up in arms about apartheid ... personally it’s the best thing that happened for young black south africans [sic] cause now white people especially men don’t stand a chance here.’ ⁸ SISONKE No wonder then, that many of us are skeptical of white friends. Their feelings matter more than ours. Our gains are seen as their losses. Zama Ndlovu illustrates: LEBO My first promotion came in 2009, a year so bad the economy saw a record negative economic growth. Despite this, I was one of a handful of people to get a coveted promotion. A white male friend and colleague cut my celebratory mood short with a passing comment: ‘Let’s not pretend your promotion had nothing to do with affirmative action.’ SISONKE Ndlovu is remarkably insightful about this personal sleight. She notes: LEBO Over time I have had to constantly remind myself that my white friends and I occupy the same spaces but live in different worlds. In their world, apartheid was a 46-year-long incident that ended in 1994, the moment Nelson Mandela dropped his ballot into the ballot box.⁹ LEBO & SISONKE With friends like these who needs enemies? SISONKE It is not only that whites are insensitive to the experiences of their black friends, it is also the case that whites who are friends with one another often form strong bonds over casual racism. Remember this news item? LEBO (newsreader’s voice) In Pretoria today, two University of Pretoria students will face disciplinary action after a photo of the two dressed up as black domestic workers went viral.The photo shows the two women covered in brown paint, wearing scarves over their heads and with pillows stuffed into their skirts to make their buttocks look bigger.The photos were posted on Facebook but were soon removed.¹⁰ SISONKE Why do fun and carefree moments of white youthfulness so often involve mocking and denigrating black people? After this event, on radio someone called into PowerFM and asked, LEBO How can we be friends with these whites when their children can so quickly forget the intimacy of being mothered by black women? SISONKE The TRC should have investigated the domestic labor system. It might have helped whites understand that in South Africa racism and intimacy are not mutually exclusive, that in fact racism and intimacy are often bedfellows. Novelist Sindiwe Magona’s star character Stella tells this story: LEBO There swimming afloat in that water of hers was her panty … she’d left it there for me to wash.What? Me? I taught her a lesson, that very first day. I took something, a peg,